


Garden of Flowers

by RegalMisfortune



Series: Gibraltar Shenanigans [14]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Flowers, Gen, Introspective piece about Zarya, Post-Omnic Crisis, Pre-Omnic Crisis, Pre-Recall, This extends from Zarya's childhood to before the Searching comic, Zarya had a bit of anger problems when she was a child, Zarya really likes flowers, and then put that energy to different uses, i waffle about one of my headcanons for a thousand words or so, or a lot, she got into fights a lot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 22:56:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15520530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RegalMisfortune/pseuds/RegalMisfortune
Summary: The flowers would be for herself, just this once, when the world no longer depended on her to fight and be strong and courageous. The flowers would be what would make her smile, when everyone else was too dredged up in the bleakness of the dust of war.A small home in the countryside with the warm sun on her shoulders. Flowers on her skin and in her garden.Someday. One day.





	Garden of Flowers

When Zarya was simply known as Aleksandra, a child who lived in the smoking ruins and wastelands of a wartorn Siberia, flitting from safe-house to abandoned building in hopes to escape the relentless waves of omnic forces, she drew small flowers on the walls with stubs of crayons, pieces of graphite or charcoal from the burnt scraps of wood. She remembered the soft, dainty petals of snowdrops peeking out between the cracks of forgotten structures, the gentle purples of crocuses that pushed out of the snow and through the joints of broken omnics. People used to smile that sad smile whenever she gave them a blossom or two that she managed to snag while she was dragged along through the wreckage. Flowers made people smile, and so she began to draw them on the walls, so that when she was not there, they would see her work and smile then too.

Clustered in the overcrowded shelters of St. Petersburg, she had been discouraged from drawing on the walls. She was old enough to know better. So she went to drawing tiny vines and petals along the sides of her schoolwork, knee-to-knee and elbow-to-elbow with the other children. Some used to make fun of her for it, called it sissy and stupid, and she knocked one poor boy’s tooth out for it.

She fought a lot of children, in those days. Adults too, who frowned at her and yelled at her and scolded her for causing so much trouble and wasting precious space on recycled paper- datapads only reserved for those _not_ poor, destitute refugees forced to flee their homes to avoid war only to be drafted into the very same war they were trying to escape.

The flowers left the papers, but she did not stop drawing them. The leaves began to have ridges and veins, the petals soft at the edges as she found pens and markers to draw them onto her skin, using the space on her forearms and legs to color in the many irises, magnolias, tulips, and daisies she learned from sketching them out from old gardening magazines and plant encyclopedias.

It became calming to her, once she was drenched in sweat and muscles shaking from running, jumping, kicking, and punching, focusing her anger and bitterness into something more _productive_. Her body became strong, but even when she collapsed onto the tiny cot she was quick to grow too large for, her emotions ran too hot for her to sleep. And so she drew, sketching out a garden on her thighs, no longer drawing on her arms when it attracted too much unwanted attention. Some chrysanthemums and hydrangeas and lilies. A small patch of hostas, a rose bush or two, and bunches of lilacs.

The war had ended, but the effects left deep wounds in Russia. She continued to live in the confines of refugee camps, the Siberian countryside still declared unsafe for the next few years.

She grew older. Her body became stronger. People stopped looking for a fight when she hit growth spurt after growth spurt, full of energy and fire that she learned to focus into physical work with her mental turmoil being soothed by the garden she imagined growing both in the front and in the back of her future home that someday, one day, she would be able to have.

She left St. Petersburg when she was as young as fifteen to return back to the home she only knew from other people, strong and wild but firmly adamant to help the reconstruction. The small town was slowly rebuilt. The people started to trickle back in. A recruiter for the national weightlifting team spotted her carrying entire beams on her own some years later when they came to visit a family friend and she knew her time in the town was coming to an end.

She accepted.

Some wild strawberries grew on her hopeful garden on her skin, their tiny flowers and slowly ripening berries becoming crisp in detail on her flesh as she began her training. She had to keep the art hidden under her shorts. Apple and peach blossoms were drifted in for aesthetic purpose only- but perhaps she could have a home where she could grow fruit trees. One day.

She trained and trained, her body as strong as the mountains behind her hometown. The relentless exercise kept her from being occupied with her emotions, and the flowers reminded her of hope and better days in the future, where she would have enough money from her winnings to buy a nice little house out in the countryside, decorating the front porch with flower boxes and decorative bushes. Perhaps she could move to Spain, where the weather was far nicer and the winters less harsh than Russia, or maybe in Italy, where she was sure to have a good chance of growing a few grapevines.

Her hopes were soon to be slashed, darkened by the increasing threat of a resurgence of omnics. The small town that she called home for only a few short years came under threat, and Zarya didn’t think of any other choice.

She joined the Russian Defense Force.

It was there when she got herself her first tattoos: something that happened when her squad had the time off and one of the team happened to be a tattoo artist of some renown skill. She really did want flowers, but the geometric patterns that the artist was known for were very strong and bold and she may have had been a tad bit drunk after a celebration of one of their first victories against the omnics.

She loved the tattoos. She did. The black and thin strips of her own skin were a dark contrast and powerful, the number of her record weightlifting a message of never to underestimate her. But the narrow branch of cherry blossoms that was slowly fading from her leg under the sweat and friction of her armor resonated in her heart, a constant secret she held close.

She had to be strong and bold for her people. Powerful and able for herself and her country. But the fragile, kind part of her was still carried with her in the hopes of a brighter, more colorful future than what the bold, black tattoos on her arm could ever bear. Perhaps, when it was said and done, she would have them removed, replaced with a branch of blossoms. Maybe even an entire sleeve of a variety of twisting morning glory vines, from hand to neck.

The flowers would be for herself, just this once, when the world no longer depended on her to fight and be strong and courageous. The flowers would be what would make her smile, when everyone else was too dredged up in the bleakness of the dust of war.

A small home in the countryside with the warm sun on her shoulders. Flowers on her skin and in her garden.

Someday. One day.


End file.
